Monday night’s monsoon storm caused a large power outage in west Phoenix that threatened to spoil perishable food at St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance near 31st Avenue and Thomas Road.
Volunteers jumped into action to save groceries that are distributed to hundreds of thousands of families, said president and CEO Beverly Damore. They executed an emergency evacuation plan for food by moving as much of it as possible into refrigerated trucks. Companies loaned the charity additional trucks and some of its partners pitched in to take more food than they normally would.
St. Mary’s still lost about $20,000 in dairy products, Damore said. But natural disasters can bring out the best in people and she said the charity benefitted Tuesday from more than one person’s kindness.
“About an hour ago a Lowe’s truck pulled up, and a woman whose name I do not know yet, but we’re going to give her a call as soon as everything settles down, saw on the news this morning that we were having a problem,” Damore said. “She called Lowe’s. She wanted to buy the biggest generator she could. She paid for it. She had Lowe’s deliver it. Lowe’s said it’s going to St. Mary’s, we’re waiving the service charge.”
Damore expected generators to help get St. Mary’s approximately 25,000 square feet of cooler and freezer space back up and running. She credited volunteers’ quick actions, and the good will of others, for helping prevent more food from spoiling.
“Frankly our biggest challenge is without power we can’t charge our forklift batteries,” Damore said. “So you can’t move the product on the pallet. So that’s one reason this generator is really going to help us. Otherwise, we’d literally come to a standstill.”
